


The Kid I'd Follow to the End of the World

by ryanthepowerbottomguy



Series: Ticket to Hell [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 17:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanthepowerbottomguy/pseuds/ryanthepowerbottomguy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geoff and Jack didn’t suddenly become best friends or anything, but he started looking out for her whenever he could. And he guessed he never really stopped. Or, how Geoff and Jack met, grew up, and took Los Santos by storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kid I'd Follow to the End of the World

Geoff had mostly dismissed the shouting coming from the shitty playground across the derelict park. It sounded like some kids a couple years younger than him roughhousing. Not unusual, not in this neighborhood. So it took him a few seconds to realize why the noises didn’t sound quite right. Among the muffled shouts he finally heard small cries of real pain, recognizable even across the park. Geoff thought it sounded like they had gotten ahold of an animal—a squirrel, or a stray cat maybe—and he headed over, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

There were three kids—twelve, probably, or maybe younger—clustered around something that Geoff couldn’t make out besides a flash of red that might have been hair or fur. The boys were skinny and looked like Geoff could break them in half without even trying. One of them was holding a pair of scissors.

“Hey now, let’s break it up,” Geoff said to the kids, willing his voice not to crack. The kids looked up at him—he was so glad for that recent growth spurt, even if it had meant making room in his family’s already strained budget for new pants—but they didn’t back away.

“We’re not hurting nobody,” one of them said, putting his hands on his hips. He was taller than the other two, and maybe older. Still younger and shorter than Geoff, though.

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Geoff said. “Scram before I go tell the cops that you’re a bunch of fucking psychopaths.”

Either the cursing or Geoff’s threat had the kids grumbling and edging away until they hit the sidewalk. Geoff kept an eye on them until they turned a corner, and then he looked down to see what the boys had been tormenting.

Not what. Who.

On the ground was a tiny kid—six, Geoff thought, maybe seven—whose long red hair had been hacked at with what looked like a pair of dull scissors. There was a bruise already coming up on the kid’s cheek and the kid’s hands were red with concrete burn.

Geoff dropped into a crouch, but he couldn’t get the kid to meet his eye. “Hey, buddy,” he said softly. The kid glanced up to him and then quickly looked away.

“You okay?” Geoff asked, keeping that same soft tone. In return he got a headshake, red hair flying everywhere and dislodging several locks that had been tangled in with the rest.

“Course not,” Geoff said. “But those assholes are gone now. You wanna come with me? Just to get your face looked at, and then I’ll take you home. I’m Geoff, by the way.”

The kid sniffled and nodded.

He helped the kid stand up and put a gentle hand on the kid’s shoulder, guiding the kid out of the park and towards Geoff’s house. The place would be empty—his parents were at work and his older brother was probably fucking his girlfriend instead of working.

“You wanna tell me your name, buddy?” Geoff asked.

“J-Jack,” the kid said, hiccupping, “Jack Pattillo.”

Geoff hummed. “I think I know your parents, Jack. Or at least my parents do.” They were pieces of shit if they left a seven-year-old kid all alone on a playground in the middle of the summer in Blaine County, but Geoff didn’t say that. Jack’s parents probably worked as hard as Geoff’s did.

They reached Geoff’s house a minute later, and he ushered Jack into the kitchen, where he handed Jack a glass of water before pulling out the first aid kit. He poured hydrogen peroxide onto the kid’s scraped hands, making Jack squirm and cry out and pull away.

“Shh, I know,” Geoff said. He wasn’t a stranger to street fights, to scraped hands and knees and bloody lips. He finished cleaning Jack’s hands, smearing antibiotic ointment into the skin before wrapping them up with bandages. He prodded at Jack’s face before figuring that Jack would have a nasty bruise there but nothing worse.

Jack still hadn’t said much except for comments about how this or that hurt. Geoff considered giving Jack some aspirin before deciding against it. He didn’t want to make the kid sick by fucking that up, and it had been years since they had kept baby aspirin in the house.

All that was left was Jack’s hair, really. It was a fuckin mess, chunks and locks missing haphazardly, dirt tangling in it.

“I could cut your hair if you want me to,” Geoff said. “Even it up some, or just cut it all off. Doesn’t that get hot?”

Jack looked—oh shit, it looked like the kid was about to start crying at the suggestion. “Don’t cut it off,” Jack yelled, and Geoff tried to reassure Jack that he wasn’t going to, just gonna make it look a little better. After all, he’d been cutting his own hair for years. How badly could he fuck up a kid’s?

Not too awfully bad, was the answer, as he admired his handiwork. He’d trimmed up Jack’s hair so that it was all the length of the shortest locks. Instead of hanging down past the kid’s shoulders it hit around Jack’s chin. Probably wouldn’t be as hot that way.

“That okay?” Geoff asked softly. Jack had fallen quiet except for sniffles a while ago.

Jack nodded quickly, hands coming up to feel the new haircut. “T-thank you,” Jack said.

“Not a problem,” Geoff said. “I’ve got to clean up this hair and then I can take you home, okay?”

Jack nodded, sitting back in the kitchen chair.

“So why were those kids after you?” Geoff asked absently as he grabbed the broom and dustpan. “They seemed like some real shitheads.”

Jack sniffled some more, but was silent for a few moments. “They said my hair makes me look like a girl,” Jack said finally, quiet.

Geoff glanced over. Jack’s head was tilted forwards so the hair covered the kid’s face, and the kid was fiddling absently with the ratty placemats on the table.

“That’s dumb,” Geoff said. “It doesn’t make you look like a girl.”

To Geoff’s surprise, the poor kid started _wailing_ , and jesus christ what had Geoff said wrong?

“B-but I _am_!” Jack said finally in between sobs. Oh, jesus. “I _am_ a girl even if no one believes me!”

“Okay buddy,” Geoff said, coming over to crouch in front of Jack. “Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Your hair makes you the prettiest girl ever. A princess, even.”

Jack’s crying started to taper off and she smiled shyly at Geoff. “R-really?”

“Yeah, of course!” Geoff said. “Now, let’s dry your face off and get you home.”

\--

Geoff and Jack didn’t suddenly become best friends or anything—Geoff was twice Jack’s age, and that would just be _weird_ —but he started looking out for the kid whenever he could. She was a little shit, he noticed. She didn’t start fights and she couldn’t hold her own once she was in them, but she didn’t back down from them, either. Geoff had been the same as a kid, but he had known how to throw a punch.

“Kid,” Geoff said once, picking her up off the sidewalk and dusting her off. “You’re going to have brain damage by the time you’re my age if you keep doing this.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, brushing the gravel out of the scrapes on her hands. She wrinkled her nose. “You smell gross.”

Geoff hadn’t ever let her see him smoking. Yeah, he was only fifteen, but she was eight, and he didn’t want her to pick up on his bad habits.

“You look gross,” he said.

“You’re an ass,” Jack replied, swiping at the blood tricking from her bottom lip. She had picked up on his swearing, much as he’d tried to cut it down around her.

“I’m the ass fixing your busted lip,” Geoff pointed out. “C’mon, let’s get back to my place.”

Sometime in the last year Geoff’s house had become their base. A few months into their friendship he had spent way too much money on a decent first-aid kit, because apparently both fifteen-year-olds and eight-year-olds could get into some nasty fights.

“You’re going to need to learn how to block those hits sometime,” Geoff said, handing Jack an icepack to hold to her face. “I may not always be around to scare kids off, you know.”

Jack glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean? Where are you going?”

Geoff sighed. He didn’t want to have this conversation with a kid as young as her. He knew where he was going to end up—had already ended up—and he at least hoped she wouldn’t get dragged down with him. But even the little bit of dealing he did at the high school could get him hurt, and he knew that. He was pretty much on his own except for his buddies, and people like him didn’t make too many friends in the business.

“I’m not going anywhere if I can help it,” he said. “But I might not be close enough to get you out of a fight. What happens then? They beat the shit out of you and you end up in the hospital? Or worse?”

“Yeah,” she said in a tiny voice. “I know. But… but they’re pricks.”

“Yeah, they are,” Geoff said. “I’m not saying you should stop picking fights with pricks. What I’m saying is that you should learn how to defend yourself so you don’t end up smeared into the pavement one day.”

Jack sighed, her shoulders slumping. Geoff knew her situation—her family had less disposable income than his own did, and there was no way she could go somewhere to learn karate or boxing or anything. Geoff was on the boxing team in high school, though.

“I can teach you how,” Geoff said. “At least enough so you can hold your own.”

Jack perked right up, grinning widely, showing off her crooked baby teeth. Jesus, but sometimes Geoff forgot how young this kid was. She was _eight_ , and he was teaching her to—to what, beat up other eight-year-olds? His life was so fucked up.

He started her off easy—how to fold her fist, where to aim for maximum damage. How to run away. How to fall right. How to protect her important parts: her head, her stomach, her eyes. How to use makeshift weapons like sticks or rocks. How to get away from the ones she couldn’t fight. How to call for help.

She started coming away from fights with fewer bruises, but it still kinda terrified Geoff. He had made this tiny girl into a _fighter_ , into someone who could hold her own against kids older and bigger than herself. But she was still a kid, still a dumb eight-year-old who liked video games and Star Wars and those stupid little pony toys Geoff sometimes found for her when he had a little extra cash. She was still a kid, Geoff reassured himself while he watched her whale on a punching bag.

\--

“What are those?” Jack asked, sounding almost scandalized. Apparently she had noticed his new piercings. They had been walking for a couple minutes already, and he had started to wonder when she would. “ _Geoff_.”

“Pretty cool, huh?” he asked, tugging at his left ear. “They were my birthday present to myself.”

“Oh my gosh,” Jack said. “Geoff, they don’t make you look cool.”

Geoff grinned. “Good thing that I wasn’t going for cool,” he said. “C’mon, not even a little bit?”

“Not even a little bit,” Jack said, but there was something sad her voice. “Did you do it yourself?”

“Hell no,” Geoff said. “Heck. Heck no. That would hurt _so much_. There’s a place in town that can’t turn me away anymore now that I’m sixteen. Kinda shady place, though.” He frowned at her. “ _Really_ shady place.”

She sighed and looked away from his pierced ear. “Yeah, I get it. I just…” She wiped at her eyes and fell silent.

Geoff slung an arm around her shoulders. “How’s this,” he said. “When you turn sixteen, we’ll go together and get your ears pierced, too. My gift to you.”

Jack smiled a little. “When I’m sixteen you’ll be _old_ ,” she said.

“So? I’ll just be a cool old guy,” he said. “I’ll call them tomorrow and get an appointment booked for your sixteenth birthday.”

“Promise?” Jack asked.

“Promise,” Geoff said.

\--

Okay, so he had never claimed he was a genius, but this had been a bad goddamned idea. Yeah, he knew he was as queer as the day was long, had known for forever, but he hadn’t ever learned to keep his mouth shut. So when some other kids had started throwing around some words he didn’t appreciate, well, he wasn’t going to stand around and say nothing, was he?

Opening his mouth had been his first mistake. Throwing a punch at a three hundred-pound linebacker while surrounded by half of the varsity football team had been his second. Not running immediately had probably been his third, or maybe that was deciding to wear the hoop earrings today.  He really didn’t want to go to the ER to get his ear stitched back together.

Thankfully the assholes were too dumb to go for the obvious weakness and instead went for his nose, his stomach. He landed hard on his back, and it knocked the air out of him. His vision went blurry for a second, and when it cleared he scrambled to his feet and started running. He really didn’t give a damn that he looked like a pussy, because he was pretty sure his nose was broken.

Most days he walked Jack home from the elementary school—kids were little shits, and ten-year-olds were the worst kind of little shits, so Jack liked having her old friend with tattoos and piercings walk her home—but he thought it would be a good idea to go home and wash the blood off instead.

By the time he heard her tapping on his bedroom window he had only managed to set his nose, and he was sitting on the floor of the bathroom to let the dizziness pass. Jesus fucking christ, but that hurt.

He managed to drag himself to the back door, where he knew Jack would be waiting. The color drained from her face when he opened the door. There wasn’t much hiding the fact that he’d gotten the shit kicked out of him.

“Are you—are you okay?” Jack asked, her voice shaky. “Geoff?”

Geoff blinked and let Jack inside. “It looks worse than it is,” he said. “Promise.”

“You didn’t show up at school today,” Jack said, taking his hand and leading him back to the bathroom. “I thought something had happened.”

He sat down on the toilet lid and leaned forward. “Not anything I couldn’t handle,” he said.

“Yeah, you really look like you could handle it,” she said, digging around the bathroom until she found the first aid kit.

“Ow ow owwwww,” he whined when she dabbed at his scraped knuckles.

“Stop being a baby,” Jack said. “They’re not even that bad.”

“Well they sure feel like it,” Geoff said. Listen, he had just set his own broken nose. He could act like a baby if he wanted to.

Jack fell silent as she bandaged his knuckles. She poked at his face to make sure nothing else was broken and then wet a washcloth to wipe away the blood on his face.

“They’re not going to come after you, right?” Jack asked, her voice small. She stared at the bloodied washcloth as she rinsed it out.

“Nah,” Geoff said softly. “This was just some assholes at my school. Jerks.”

Jack chewed at her lip, staring at Geoff’s face. “Promise?”

“Promise,” Geoff said, as serious as he could be, and then he heaved himself up to get some ice for his nose.

\--

The tapping at his window started up just as he was deciding whether he should try to fall asleep. He threw on some sweatpants and crept to the back door, hoping that he wouldn’t wake his parents up.

“Jack, what is it?” he whispered. She looked small and cold and scared, standing on his back steps in the dark. Her house was two streets over, way too far to be walking alone this late at night—for anyone, never mind an eleven-year-old girl.

“My parents never came home tonight,” she whispered back, looking close to tears. “Can I stay here?”

Geoff nodded, already ushering her inside. “Are you hungry?” he asked. She shook her head, but he made a detour to the kitchen anyway to get her some juice and an apple.

“Do you want to try to sleep?” Geoff asked when they were safe in Geoff’s bedroom. Jack shook her head absently and buried herself in Geoff’s blankets.

“What if something happened to them?” she asked, voice tiny and muffled from the blanket.

“I’m sure they just lost track of time,” Geoff said. He sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to rub her back. “Don’t worry about them too much.”

Even as he spoke, though, his head was spinning with _what-if_ thoughts. What if something _had_ happened to Jack’s parents. What if they never came back. What if Jack got sent to a foster home or worse. No. No, if something had happened, then Geoff would make sure Jack didn’t end up in the foster care system. He was eighteen; he would figure something out.

She didn’t say anything else, but she drank the juice and started listening to his Walkman when he handed it to her. She fell asleep like that, curled up in Geoff’s bed with The Clash playing loud in her ears. He carefully eased the headphones off and dug out his flashlight and the book he was reading. He’d keep watch and make sure nothing disturbed her sleep. He didn’t mind; he was enjoying his book.

The next morning he woke her up early so he could walk her back to her house before his parents woke up.

“Listen,” he said as they walked. “I’m glad—I’m glad that you showed up last night, but it’s not safe to walk around these streets by yourself at night like that, especially unarmed. There’s more dangerous people than bullies out that late.”

She nodded seriously, still very quiet.

Her parents’ car was in the driveway when they turned the corner to her house, and she smiled a little. He helped her climb in through her bedroom window, but they shouldn’t have bothered with being quiet: Jack told him later that her parents had been passed out, dead to the world, when she had left for school that morning.

It wasn’t the last time she showed up at his back door late at night because her parents hadn’t shown up. The next time he opened his back door at midnight for her, though, she was carrying a baseball bat.

\--

They’d known each other for years, and it wasn’t unusual anymore to open the door to find Jack bruised and bloody on the other side, or to come home to her perched on his front steps. His older brother had called her his girlfriend once before Geoff beat the idea out of his head, stomach turning because she was _eleven_ , christ.

But this was different. He came home from work—ha, “work”, what a joke, he was a goddamn drug dealer—to find her sitting on the sidewalk in front of his house, knees pulled up to her chest.

“Hey,” Geoff said. “Jack, buddy. What’s wrong?” He helped her stand up when she didn’t say anything. He couldn’t see any injuries on her but there were tear-tracks on her cheeks and her face was red and blotchy.

He led her into his bedroom and sat her down on his desk chair. She still didn’t say anything, just hung her head so her long hair hid her face.

“Jack, you’re really starting to freak me out,” Geoff said, crouching in front of her. “C’mon, please tell me what happened. Are you in trouble? Do I need to take care of somebody for you?”

And that was when Jack started crying—sobbing, really—in a way Geoff hadn’t seen in years, and it only ratcheted up his worry further. He hovered close to her, not knowing what the fuck to do, hands out like he couldn’t make up his mind whether to hug her or not.

In between her body-shaking sobs she stuttered out words, and it took him a couple seconds to decipher them. “My dad—wants me to c-cut my hair—says—says boys my age shouldn’t—have long hair—I can’t go to school anymore if—if it’s still long—”

Jesus. Geoff rocked back on her heels before learning forward again to hug her, and she latched on to his shirt, crying into his shoulder.

“Shh, shh, it’s gonna be okay, we’ll make it okay,” he murmured. “I’ll make sure we do.”

Eventually her crying tapered off, and she was quiet for long enough that Geoff thought she had fallen asleep.

“Will you cut it for me?” she asked softly. “I don’t—I don’t want anyone else doing it.”

Geoff swallowed heavily. “Yeah, of course I will,” he said, his voice thick. “Right now?”

Jack nodded against his shoulder. “Get it over with.”

Jesus. Geoff led her to the bathroom, rubbing his hand down his face, across his patchy stubble. Fuck.

She sat down backwards on the toilet lid, silent, her head down. Geoff pulled out the scissors he used to trim his own hair, and got to work. Jack’s hair was still baby-fine and it cut easily. He cut a few inches at a time, letting her acclimate to it, letting her tell him when it was short enough. He didn’t want to cause her any more pain than he had to.

She ended up with a messy cut, hair a couple inches long at most, hopefully short enough to appease her father but long enough for her to feel it.

“You okay?” he asked as he swept her hair into the trash. She had turned to sit right-ways on the toilet lid, legs pulled up to her chest, head resting on her knees.

“No,” she said. “But at least now I won’t get picked on as much.” There was something in her voice that just about killed Geoff. No kid should ever sound that heartbroken.

\--

Opening his back door to find nearly five feet of fuming twelve-year-old was weird. Usually there was more blood involved.

“You okay?” Geoff asked, unsure of how to proceed. She didn’t look injured. He couldn’t see any fresh bruises on her.

Jack’s jaw worked for a couple seconds as she pushed past Geoff. “Fuck this,” she finally spat out. Middle school had been good for her vocabulary. “Just fuck it.”

Her voice cracked on the last word—anger or something else, Geoff couldn’t tell.

“Okay, what are we fucking?” Geoff asked. Jack flopped back on Geoff’s bed, glaring at the cracked ceiling like it had done her wrong.

“This whole puberty thing is bullshit,” she muttered finally. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Geoff blinked. That wasn’t what he had expected. He wasn’t sure what to say to her.

“I don’t want to grow up,” Jack said, her voice getting louder. “Just for a few more years. I don’t want my voice to get deeper and I don’t want to grow a beard and I just don’t want… I don’t want to grow up.”

“It happens to everybody, Jack,” Geoff said quietly. “Nothing we can do to stop it.”

“Then I don’t want to grow up like _this_ ,” Jack said, all the anger leached out of her voice. “I want to grow up to be a girl.”

“There’s—there’s hormones and stuff, right?” Geoff asked, floundering. He wasn’t sure how to go about this at all. “Surgery and bullshit like that.”

Jack laughed, much too bitterly for a twelve-year-old. “Yeah, I guess. But it’s not like my parents would let me do any of that. It’s a miracle that my dad is even letting me grow my hair back out. Maybe when I’m an adult, but by then it’ll be too late.”

Geoff nodded. “So you just… have to wait? That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does,” Jack said dully. “It’s so messed up.”

It was messed up. It sucked that Jack’s parents were such shitheads, and it sucked that she had been born the wrong way, and it sucked that she wouldn’t be able to get what she needed until she was so old.

“It’s pills and shit, right?” Geoff asked hesitantly. “The hormones, that is.”

Jack looked over at him. “Yeah, I think so. Not exactly a lot of info in the library.”

Geoff nodded, already thinking. Hell, even if there wasn’t much info up here, he was sure he could find something in Los Santos. He’d just have to convince Burnie to drive him down, or let Geoff borrow Burnie’s car. Hell, Burnie had connections. Maybe _he_ ’d be able to find something.

“Why?” Jack asked. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious,” Geoff lied easily. “Hey, my paycheck just came in. You want to go see a movie?”

“Sure,” Jack said, not looking fooled for a second. “Why not. As long as it’s not Forrest Gump.”

Turned out Geoff was right; there was a place in Los Santos with a rainbow flag hanging in the window where he got all kinds of information and pamphlets printed on pastel paper. He took them home and hid them in his desk drawer, poring over them when his parents were asleep or working. He really didn’t want to deal with those kinds of questions from them.

“Okay Burnie,” Geoff said one day when they were hanging out at Burnie’s place. It was nice, having an older friend who had his own apartment and his own stash of dealers and home-grown product. Made things easier, that was for sure.

He pulled out his list and handed it to Burnie. “I need you to find somebody black-market who sells this stuff.”

Burnie raised his eyebrows as he looked at the paper. “Something you want to tell me, Geoff?”

Geoff shook his head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s for a friend.”

Burnie nodded, humming thoughtfully. “I’ll try. No guarantees, though. This isn’t the usual kind of stuff we deal in.”

Somehow Burnie did find a dealer, and he handed the pills over to Geoff with an eye-roll. “Don’t even ask me why people sell this kind of stuff,” he said. “Your friend better appreciate it.”

When Geoff handed Jack the bag, Jack looked understandably confused. “I don’t do drugs,” she said when she pulled out the bottle, and then she read the label.

“Oh god,” she said quietly. She sat down on his bed, eyes glued to the bottle. “Geoff, how?”

Geoff shrugged. “I have my connections,” he said with a grin. Burnie had given him the seller’s contact information— _“I’m not buying this shit for you anymore,”_ Burnie had said; _“From now on it’s your own damn responsibility”_ —which meant Geoff had graduated from seller to buyer. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

The smile spread slowly across Jack’s face, and yeah, Geoff knew how he felt about it. He would do anything to protect this kid.

\--

Reality checks were never fun, especially not when they came in the form of knife wounds.

“Dude, this looks serious,” Gus said as the three of them sat in Geoff’s parents’ bathroom, Burnie starting to sew up the wound on Geoff’s arm. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

Geoff shook his head. “Can’t afford it,” he mumbled. He didn’t want his parents to know, either. Burnie had made him drink a couple shots of vodka a few minutes ago, and with the blood loss it had gone right to his head. Meant he didn’t feel the needle as much, though.

It was just going to get worse, he knew. The three of them, they were tiny little fish in a gigantic ocean, and they were out of their depth. It had been manageable when they were just selling Burnie’s homegrown weed at the high school. But they’d branched out, Burnie getting in with coke suppliers and heroin dealers. It was still just the three of them, though, three kids in over their heads, and tonight a customer had pulled a knife on Geoff.

Burnie finished the stiches and cut the string before washing the blood off his hands and Geoff’s skin. Gus had gone silent and pale during the procedure, but now he was quick to rub neosporin over the wound and then help Geoff back to his bedroom.

“Get some sleep, okay?” Gus whispered. “We’ll come check on you in the morning.”

Geoff nodded and rolled over so he could stretch his arm out, listening as Gus padded out of the room and closed the door.

The adrenaline started to leach out of his body, but he couldn’t sleep. His foggy brain could only focus on one thought: this was going to get worse. He and Burnie and Gus were starting to make a name for themselves, and as was evidenced by tonight, they were starting to make enemies. It was only a matter of time until he pissed off someone powerful—more powerful than a druggie with a knife—and they went after somebody he cared about.

He slept poorly that night, alcohol-fueled nightmares keeping him up until the early morning hours, images of blood and pain burned into his eyelids. When the sun finally dawned the next morning, his arm ached and his heart hurt.

He took some aspirin for the first, but there wasn’t anything to be done about the other. Yeah, maybe he could get out, get a real job. Where, though? He’d spent all of high school dealing progressively harder stuff, and he hadn’t paid too much attention in class because of it. And nothing he did after this would make the kind of money that he was raking in now.

Burnie showed up later that morning. He checked on Geoff’s stitches, cleaning them again before putting a gauze bandage over them.

“Shouldn’t scar too badly,” Burnie murmured, sitting back. Geoff nodded, too exhausted to even respond properly.

“This is fucked up,” Geoff said after a few minutes of silence, rubbing his face.

“Yeah, it is,” Burnie said with a sigh. He looked kinda defeated. Of the three of them, he was the oldest, the one in charge, and Geoff could see it weighing on him. Geoff didn’t have anything to reassure his friend with, though, nothing to get that look off his face.

The previous night’s worry—that someone he loved would get hurt—continued to plague him throughout the day, and that afternoon he made his way to the middle school to walk Jack home like he hadn’t done in years.

“Something wrong?” she asked when she saw him, confusion in her eyes. He’d ended their routine a year or two ago, after she insisted that she wasn’t a baby and could get herself home fine.

“Nah,” Geoff said. “Just bored.” If she saw through the lie, she didn’t call him on it. She could tell he was distracted, and kept shooting him confused looks. All he could think about was blood, and how much she trusted him—had always trusted him—to keep her safe, and how goddamn fucked up his life was.

It didn’t take long to make his decision, not really. A few sleepless nights, a couple exhausted days, was all it took to convince himself that this was the right thing to do. He should have done it years ago. Really, it was the only thing he could do. He couldn’t keep dragging the kid around and putting her in danger.

He knew all her haunts, all the places she hung out at, and that made it easy to avoid those streets, those neighborhoods. He learned to ignore a certain pattern of knocking at his bedroom window. He learned to stop looking for her in every crowd of preteens. He learned to avoid all their little meeting spots.

One night, feeling like a total creep, he snuck into her backyard and taped a note to her window. The piece of paper had a phone number and a name of a doctor in town who would prescribe a thirteen-year-old hormones. He left the note unsigned, but he was sure she would know who it was.

\--

In the next few years, he picked up new scars, new tattoos, new bad habits. He left for a shitty apartment in Los Santos that year, and he had made enough of a name for himself up in Blaine County that he easily fell in with a gang in Los Santos. He learned how to shoot a gun, then, how to deal with rival gang members and uppity dealers. Learned not to trust people further than the barrel of his gun. Gus and Burnie weren’t around to protect him anymore. He learned that regimes could change every day, that there was little honor among drug dealers.

He found himself at twenty-five in a dark, dead-end alley, rain slicking the knife in his hand. He’d been tasked with taking care of some little asshole of a drug dealer, some shithead who’d been stealing their customers and their product. This alley was where the dumbass did his business. He was annoyingly predictable, and just stupid enough that he had survived this long on a combination of dumb luck and never asking questions.

As Geoff’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he moved further into the alley.

The smell of blood hit him all at once, its presence cloying and wrong here, and he froze.

A man—the dealer, from the looks of it—lay in a crumpled, bloody heap on the ground, and a figure stood over him, a bloody bat in her hand.

He must have made some kind of noise because she whipped around, long red hair flying, and brandished her bat in his direction.

“Where did you come from?” she asked, and the fear in her voice put her in her late teens in Geoff’s estimation.

He held up his hands. “I’m not after you. I was after him. Looks like I owe you a favor. I’m not here to make trouble for you, buddy.”

Something in her expression shifted at his last word, and she dropped the bat and came towards him. He really didn’t want to hurt her, so he let her grab his arm and pull him out of the alley and under a streetlight. He let her stare at his face. Her brown eyes were hard and sharp, he noticed, and there was blood on her cheeks and in her hair.

He hadn’t expected her to punch him.

The back of his head hit the lamp pole and he went wobbly on his feet. Had she not grabbed his biceps he probably would have been flat on his ass.

“Jesus dicks,” he groaned, rubbing at his jaw. “What the fuck?”

“I thought you were dead,” she said, quiet, her voice shaking. “I thought you were _gone_ , Geoff.”

He blinked. He recognized that voice, even if it belonged to someone much younger than the teenager in front of him. He knew those eyes, that red hair.

“Jack,” he breathed, wrapping his arms around her, gripping the back of her head when she buried her face in his shoulder. “Christ, Jack, I didn’t—what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she muttered against his jacket.

Geoff let go of her, stepped back. The blood on her face was smeared—it was probably on his clothes now—and he gripped her by the shoulder. “Let’s clean this mess up and get out of here, yeah?”

Jack smiled, almost like old times, but there was something hard and bitter in her eyes.

They ended up at a shitty diner downtown, bloody body and bloody clothes thrown in the trunk of Geoff’s shitty car. Jack picked at her fries, looking tiny and pale in Geoff’s spare jacket, and he watched her over the rim of his coffee mug.

“How have you been?” he asked finally, wincing at his own awkwardness. It had never been like this when they were kids.

Jack shrugged and didn’t look up. “I’ve… been. Finished high school a few months ago. Met up with some people down here.”

Her vagueness made him uncomfortable. “What have you been doing down here?”

“What do you think, Geoff?” Jack said. “I’ve been doing the same thing you have. Gotta make ends meet, right?”

“Right,” Geoff said. He wasn't—wasn’t angry, really, or disappointed. Just... just a little sad, maybe. Regretful that it wasn't him still watching out for her. And overlaying it all, there was a feeling of intense pride that she had survived. That she was eighteen and in Los Santos and in a place where they could stumble across each other again.

“People treating you well?” he said instead of any of that.

Jack nodded, some of the stiffness bleeding out of her shoulders. “They’re decent enough,” she said. “Well. Decent for dealers.”

“All you can ask for in this city,” Geoff said, setting down the cooling bitter coffee. “You’re eating well? Sleeping okay?”

Jack rolled her eyes. “Yes, mom, and I’m washing behind my ears too.”

Geoff cracked a smile. “Good. Ear gunk is the absolute worst.”

They fell into a comfortable silence again, like six years hadn’t passed, like they were both still kids. Like they didn’t both have blood on their hands.

\--

They exchanged contact information—phone numbers, emails, AIM usernames—after they dumped the body, and promises to keep in contact.

“You should come over to my place sometime for dinner or something,” Geoff said casually while they sat in his car, idling on the curb. Jack was all lean muscle now, and too skinny; it worried Geoff a little.

“Yeah,” Jack said distractedly, opening the passenger side door. “I’ll make sure to do that.” Then she was gone, disappearing into the crowded night streets of Los Santos. The exchange was weird, made the hair on his arms prickle, but then again, it had been six years. They were both older now, practically strangers to each other.

A few days later he called her and asked if she was free for dinner that night. She was, so he made sure to run out to get ingredients for decent food. He had learned to cook in the last few years—he had to have, living alone—and he enjoyed it, so why not? It would probably be better than pizza or Chinese takeout. He picked up a six-pack too, even though he hoped Jack hadn’t picked up drinking as much as he had.

Dinner was quiet for the most part, and kind of weird. There was something brewing in Jack’s eyes, and she seemed distracted all throughout the meal. Finally she pushed her chair back and set her elbows on the table.

“You need something?” Geoff asked.

She sighed heavily. “What do you want from me, Geoff? Just spit it out already.”

“I don’t—” Geoff started. “Jesus. I just wanted to catch up, seeing as I haven’t seen you for six years.”

“And whose fault was that?” Jack demanded. “You’re the one that fucking disappeared, not me.”

“What do you want me to say, Jack?” Geoff asked. “You were a kid, you wouldn’t have understood.”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Jack pointed out. “Don’t get me wrong, Geoff, I’m glad you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere, but I deserve to know why.”

Geoff sighed. “What can I say? Some shit happened, and I got scared.”

“‘Shit happened’,” Jack parroted back, rolling her eyes. “Fuck you, Geoff Ramsey. Like what, that you got tired of hanging around some dumb kid all the time? Did your dealer buddies call you names?”

“Fuck you,” Geoff said, voice low. “I got stabbed, you asshole. I got stabbed by some fucking druggie, and I got _scared_. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell a twelve-year-old kid that I was afraid she was going to get murdered by some psycho dealer to get back at me.”

“Not everything’s about you, Geoff,” Jack snapped. “Jesus.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It was about _you_ , you idiot,” Geoff said. That shut Jack up for a minute, at least. She sat back, arms folded over her chest, and didn’t say anything else.

Geoff drained his beer and got up to get another. When he turned back to the table, Jack was wiping at her eyes.

“For a while I thought you were dead,” she said quietly. “There was never anything in the papers, though, so I figured you just moved on to bigger and better things and forgot to tell me.”

Geoff pulled up his chair beside hers. “That wasn’t it,” he said, staring straight ahead and not looking at her. “I was a scared, stupid kid and I didn’t want to fuck up your life more than I already had.”

“Yeah,” she said. “For the record, I’m still pissed at you.”

“Don’t blame you one bit.” Geoff sighed.

“You could have said _something_ ,” Jack said. She reached over and swiped his beer, taking a long drink of it. “You could have said, ‘Hey, I’m in a little trouble and have to move to Los Santos. We won’t be able to talk for a while, but don’t worry about me.’ At least then I would have _known_.”

“I guess,” Geoff said. She was so right, though. “I just wasn’t thinking right when it happened.”

Jack sighed. “Yeah, I guess so. Still a shithead.”

“Not gonna argue there,” he said. “You still want to be friends with this old shithead?”

“Why the fuck not,” Jack said, brushing her hair back and tucking it behind her ears. He only noticed it because he had turned at her words to look at her face.

“Hey, your ears aren’t pierced,” Geoff said, confusion creasing his brow. He vaguely remembered the promise had had made to her.

Jack let out a watery hiccup of a laugh. “Yeah, I never ended up getting them pierced,” she said. “It sounds so dumb now, but I guess I just didn’t want to get them pierced without you. That way I could tell myself that you’d just delayed your promise and not completely broken it.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Geoff muttered. “You remembered that?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I kinda held on to it after you disappeared. ‘Maybe he’ll come back and take me to get my ears pierced when I’m sixteen.’ That kind of thing.”

Geoff blinked a couple times and checked his watch. “Well, I’m pretty sure they’re closed now, but I know a place in town we could get them pierced at. Want to go tomorrow, see if they can squeeze you in?”

Jack laughed, smiling brightly for the first time all evening. “Sure. You’re _years_ behind on birthday presents, after all.”

\--

The next few years weren’t easy. Being in different crews was weird, and Geoff just thanked the powers that be that his gang and Jack’s never really got into it with each other.

Regimes could change every day, though, and the little kingdom he was a part of crumbled suddenly. One day they were at the top of the world, and the next day people were dead and the boss’s apartment building was on fire. Geoff got out of there, considered leaving Los Santos entirely. Maybe Gus and Burnie would take him back—but no, hadn’t they moved to Texas or some shit? He considered groveling for a place in the gang Jack belonged to.

But he was tired of being at the bottom of the totem pole. Tired of being the guy who they trusted enough to plan the occasional heist but not trust enough to give any actual leadership to. He was bright, he knew, and he had made some strong connections over the years. He had people who would listen to him.

Only one person really mattered, though.

He showed up that night at Jack’s place, soaking wet from the sudden storm that had come through Los Santos and doused the remaining flames from the apartment fire.

“Hey,” he said when she opened the door. “Mind if I crash here tonight?”

She had to have heard the news—word travelled fast in this city—but she opened her door wide for him. “My couch is free,” she said. “You in trouble?”

He shook his head, getting water all over her floor. She disappeared around the corner for a moment and came back with a towel. “Nah,” he said as he rubbed his hair. “Not in trouble. Well, no less than anyone else in my crew is.”

“I heard the news,” she said. “You want me to put in a good word for you?”

“I don’t want to start back all over again,” he said. “Not with another boss.” He looked up at her. “I think I want to start my own crew.”

Jack smiled and shook her head. “You’re getting old and want to settle down now?”

Geoff laughed. “Something like that.” He looked over at her. “I wanted to know, actually, if you wanted to join me. We could be pretty awesome together.”

Jack grinned, her smile as sharp as knives. “We could, couldn’t we?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ryanthepowerbottomguy](http://ryanthepowerbottomguy.tumblr.com) over on tumblr! come say hi!


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